“Let Us Keep the Feast:” Some Perspectives on the Form and Symbolism of the Eucharistic Bread in the Early and Medieval West

MELITA THEOLOGICA Nicholas Paxton* Journal of the Faculty of Theology University of Malta 68/2 (2018): 159-172 “Let us Keep the Feast:” Some Perspectives on the Form and Symbolism of the Eucharistic Bread in the Early and Medieval West The Early Form of the Eucharistic Bread o begin with, we should clarify the form of the Eucharistic bread before the TWestern resumption of unleavened bread (azymes). The use ofartos instead of azyma in the four New Testament accounts of the Last Supper probably tells us that the type of bread used was not considered sufficiently important to merit specification, although Andrew McGowan believes that such a use “might reflect the assimilation of the institution narratives to meal practices of a more everyday nature… or may conversely be a remnant of a non-paschal tradition embedded in the Gospel accounts”1 – even though any such tradition, if it existed, would have been superseded well before the end of the first Christian century. Thus, leavened bread was considered acceptable for Eucharistic use. For example, in a work sometimes attributed to Ambrose but perhaps from the early fifth century we have the statement meus panis est usitatus (“my bread is the usual sort”),2 while the consecrated fermentum particle about which Innocent I wrote to Decentius, * Nicholas Paxton, formerly an Associate Chaplain at the University of Salford, England, works for the Salford Diocesan Archives and undertakes pastoral work in neighbouring Manchester. He has published widely, usually in the fields of Liturgy and Church History. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 1 Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 94. 2 De Sacramentis, 4, 4, in Jacques-Paul Migne ed. Patrologia Latina (hereafterPL ), 16, 439. 159 160 MELITA THEOLOGICA Bishop of Gubbio in 416 must have been leavened in virtue of its name.3 Almost two centuries later, Gregory the Great has it written of him how he saw a woman grin at receiving the bread of her own offering at communion.4 As to the bread’s appearance, Theodor Klauser notes that “perhaps it was shaped like a small wreath,”5 while, more specifically, J. A. Jungmann refers to two Ravenna Eucharistic mosaics in which “the bread appears in the form of a chaplet or crown, that is, twisted like a braid and then wound into a circlet about four inches across.”6 He identifies this with thecorona used from at least the third century (presumably referring to the entry for Pope Zephyrinus in the Liber Pontificalis)7 and later mentioned by Gregory. Jungmann also argues that “sometimes the centre hole of the crown was filled in, and so the bread had the form of a disk.”8 This conforms toOrdo Romanus IV, written about 770-790,9 which states that “the pontiff [bishop] breaks one of the breads which he is offering for himself and leaves its crown (et dimittit coronam ipsius) on the altar.”10 As late as 1089, another author, either Bernard of Constance or his more famous pupil Bernold 3 Innocent I, Epistola ad Decentium Eugubinum 5, PL, 20, 556-557, also 56, 516-517, also 130, 696; Martin Connell, Church and Worship in Fifth-Century Rome: The Letter of Innocent I to Decentius of Gubbio (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2002), 39-40. For more recent research and opinions, see John Baldovin, “The Fermentum at Rome in the Fifth Century: A Reconsideration,” Worship 79 (2005): 38-53; Lizette Larson-Miller, “The Liturgical Inheritance of the Late Empire in the Middle Ages,” in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, ed. Ian Levy et al. (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2012), 57; Bryan Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day (London: SCM, 2013), 203; also Mary Leith and Allyson Sheckler, “Relics? What Relics?,” in Religious Competition in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Nathaniel DesRosiers and Lily Vuong (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 207. 4 Paul the Deacon, Vita Sancti Gregorii, 23, PL, 75, 52-53. For this story as retold by Jacopo De Fazio (“Jacobus de Voragine,” 1230–1298), see Daniel Bornstein, “Relics, Ascetics, Living Saints,” in Medieval Christianity, ed. Daniel Bornstein (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 92; Kathryn Rudy, Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 101. 5 Theodor Klauser,A Short History of the Western Liturgy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1979), 67. 6 Josef Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, ed. Charles Riepe (London: Burns & Oates, 1959), 330. 7 Liber Pontificalis, ed. Louis Duchesne (Paris: Thorin, 1886), 1, 139. 8 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 330. 9 Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources (Washington DC: The Pastoral Press, 1986), 152; Barry Craig, Fractio Panis: A History of the Breaking of Bread in the Roman Rite (Rome, Studia Anselmiana 151: Pont. Ateneo Sant’Anselmo, 2011), 147. 10 Ordo Romanus xc 57, in Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age, ed. Michel Andrieu (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense Administration, 1971), 2:164. “Let us Keep the Feast” - Nicholas Paxton 161 of Constance, in a work now seemingly lost but paraphrased in the sixteenth century by Georgius Cassander, uses the phrase “the form of a crown,” but this time it refers to a surely unleavened roll, made from “a handful of fine flour.”11 Jungmann also argues that the most usual type of bread may have been circular with a cross cut into it to facilitate breaking, since such a pattern was known in the ancient world for secular use.12 Alternatively, the loaf may have been marked with a circle for the crown and then several lines for breaking the rest of it. This would accord better withOrdo IV’s “crown”; and, while such a view is not provable, there should be recorded both that little hollow loaves of such a kind are still baked for secular use in Rome today and that such popular customs are often very old. So we can see that the bread was, at least generally, leavened. Archdale King observes that “the references cited in favour of azymes in the early Church are quite inconclusive, and they are for the most part either apocryphal or symbolical.”13 One instance of the apocryphal is the quotation ascribed to Gregory the Great by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae III, 74, 4. “For, Gregory says: ‘The Roman Church offers unleavened bread, because our Lord took flesh without union of sexes: but the Greek Churches offer leavened bread, because the Word of the Father was clothed with flesh; as leaven is mixed with the flour.’”14 As this belongs to no surviving work of Gregory, there seems to be an error of attribution on Aquinas’ part;15 the quotation comes, in fact, from the Tractatus contra Errores Graecorum of 1250 or 1252, by an author identified by Migne as Pantaleon, deacon of Constantinople during Western rule there; he seems to have been a Dominican.16 To explain and assess King’s observation in the setting of the Roman West, we will move on to look at the symbolism of azymes, with special reference to their adoption. The Symbolic Adoption of Unleavened Bread In a Passover context, unleavened bread is mentioned in Exodus both as to be eaten at the Passover meal (12: 8) and as food for the people during the week after it (12: 18-20). Theazymes of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (which 11 Gerald Ellard, “Bread in the Form of a Penny,” Theological Studies 4/3 (1943): 343. 12 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 330. 13 Archdale King, Liturgy of the Roman Church (London: Longmans, 1957), 169-170. 14 Translation accessed December 20, 2018, www.newadvent.org/summa/4074.htm 15 Reginald Maxwell Woolley, The Bread of the Eucharist (London: Mowbray, 1913), 14. 16 Jacques-Paul Migne ed. Patrologia Graeca (hereafter PG), 140, 524. See also Roger Pearse, accessed December 20, 2018, www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2015-10-24 162 MELITA THEOLOGICA originally started on the day following the Passover) were baked with the first wheat of the new harvest and so were made before the new leaven, made with old dough kept from before the feast and fermented, was ready. Philo thus saw this feast as commemorating the world’s creation in its former purity.17 And, for Paul, the leaven’s absence became a symbol of “sincerity and truth”: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:7b-8). Justin, addressing the Jews in the mid second century, both sees the specifically fine flour of a particular Jewish offering as a “type” of the Eucharistic bread18 and takes up the Pauline symbolism of leaven as denoting “malice and wickedness,” but applies it specifically to the old leaven and therefore without Paul’s festal image: “What the azymes signify is that you should no longer do the old works of the evil leaven. But… God commanded you to knead a new leaven, after the seven days of the unleavened bread, which signifies the practice of new works.”19 Hippolytus, writing in the early third century and, it seems, primarily addressing the Roman church, develops this by seeing the new leaven as symbolizing Christ’s redemption of humankind: “Let the Jews, then, eat the azymes for seven days, let them strive on during the seven ages of the world. But as for us, Christ, our Pasch, is sacrificed, and we have received a new paste from his holy mixing.”20 Although the antithesis between “azymes” and “new paste” implies that Hippolytus saw the latter as leavened, not unleavened as for Paul in 1 Cor 5:7, we can see that early Christianity adapted the symbolism of the purified creation, together with the liberation idea associated with the Passover, to refer to our regeneration in Christ.

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